This Past week I have been faced with the serious illness of my Husband, Partner, Love, Buddy and my Rock to lean on when I needed it.
There does not seem to be a way to “get ready” for that event. As we age we know that is on the horizon. You are aware that at some point, that solid Man that was never sick, never complained about aches and pains could have something life threatening happen. It's pushed to the back of your mind like the ostrich head in the sand.
Then one day you realize he sits all day. The recliner is where he is from Morn til Night. But on asking him if he's ok, he says “He’s fine.”
Then, he call’s a Doctor for an appointment. They say he has Blockage to the heart. We then go to a specialist for an exam. The exam turns into an immediate room at the “Short Stay” unit of the hospital. They say he needs Balloons or a Bypass. In doing the test to decide which, they find his blood (all three kinds) are super low. They stop everything and send us home. That lasted until that night and he was back in the Hospital “long stay unit” to find the cause. They can’t fix the heart that has 85% blockage, 75% blockage and 30% blockage on its valves, because the blood levels are to low to survive the surgery.
He has so much cancer in his family, Mom, Dad and two Sister passed away with that awful disease, that we looked at each other realizing this could be bad. I know he is terrified, but he never says a word. Just askes the Doctors “What do we do next?”
Neither one of us is saying anything about it to the other, the terror is there for each of us as well as our Children and family.
At this point in time we still don’t know, the tests have not come back. What we know is we have had a wonderful life together. We know, we are the best of friends and have held each other up through so many struggles in our lives. I am always the one to take care of the budget, do the home and coordinate all the family schedules. When things get too much, he is the one with the shoulder and “its all going to be o.k.”. He takes care of everything when the rest of us, just don't know where to start.
That is where he is now. He took our son to catch the bus, then went to get his hair cut. If he ends up back in the hospital, he must have his hair looking nice. Thats our Papa. Should he be up? No, but he knew I needed to work on our e-commerce business that has been ignored for almost a week. That is who he is. A Rock for all of us.
How do we handle this? Well I don’t have any great words of wisdom for once. I know our children need us to be strong. He needs us to “Cowboy up”. I understand after losing my Brother at 28 years old that life does go on. How do we understand the why of this? I don’t think we can. How do we prepare ourselves for this? I don’t think we (or I) can. We have to have a strong belief. We have to have the ability to look back and acknowledge the wonders of our life together.
This scare is I hope just that, a scare. I know the heart blockage still has to be attended to, but that is done to thousands of people all the time with great success. I believe in my heart that our time together will be much longer and I know it will be much sweeter. This is our Masters way to reminding us to never take for granted what we have. No matter how hard a day is or life seems, if we have each other the weight of the trip is much lighter.
I love this quote that seems to sum it up for me…..
“Reach out and capture the joy life can offer, the beauty, goodness and love that abound. Reach out each day and gather its blessing, then reach out to each other and share what you’ve found.”
I wrote this Blog because I needed to get my thoughts out there. To remind myself we can not have any limiting beliefs right now. If by some chance others are going through a similar situation, maybe this will help. Your not alone and you can’t give up. If the worst happens remember the wonderful joy and love you were able to enjoy.
Prayers be with our “Papa”, he is our Rock….
